The Electric and Magnetic Affinities Between Man and Nature

HP Blavatsky @ Theosophy Trust

The Electric And Magnetic Affinities
Between Man And Nature

Without going too deeply into certain vexed questions based
upon what the orthodox men of science please to term the
"hypothetical" conclusions of the Psychological School, whenever we meet
with discoveries made by the former, coinciding perfectly with the teachings of
the latter, we think ourselves entitled to make them known to the world of
skeptics. For instance, this psychological, or spiritual, school holds that
"every being and naturally-formed object is in its beginning, a spiritual
or monadial entity" which, having its origin in the spiritual or monadial
plane of existence, must necessarily have as many relations with the latter as
it has with the material or sensuous plane in which it physically develops
itself. That "each, according to species, evolves from its monadial centre
an essential aura, which has positive and negative magnetoid relations with the
essential aura of every other, and that, mesmeric attraction and
repulsion exhibiting a strong analogy with magnetic attraction and
repulsion, this analogous attraction and repulsion obtains not only between
individuals of the same, but of different species, not only in animate but in
inanimate nature." (Clairvoyance, Hygienic and Medical by Jacob
Dixon, L.S.A.L.)

Thus if we give our attention but to the
electric and magnetic fluids in men and animals, and the existing mysterious
but undoubted interrelation between these two, as well as between both of them
and plants and minerals, we will have an inexhaustible field of research, which
may lead us to understand more easily the production of certain phenomena. The
modification of the peripheral extremities of nerves by which electricity is
generated and discharged in certain genera of fishes, is of the most wonderful
character, and yet, to this very day its nature remains a mystery to exact
science. For when it has told us that the electric organs of the fish generate
the electricity which is rendered active by nervous influence, it has given us
an explanation as hypothetical as that of the psychologists whose theories it
rejects in toto. The horse has nerves and muscles as well as a fish, and
even more so; the existence of animal electricity is a well-established fact,
and the presence of muscular currents has been found in the undivided as well
as in the divided muscles of all the animals, and even in those of man. And yet
by the simple lashing of its feeble tail a small electrical fish prostrates a
strong horse! Whence this electric power, and what is the ultimate nature and
essence of the electric fluid? Whether as a cause or effect, a primary agent or
a correlation, the reason for each of its manifestations is yet hypothetical.
How much, or how little has it to do with vital power? Such are the ever
recurring and always unanswerable queries. One thing we know, though, and that
is, that the phenomena of electricity as well as those of heat and
phosphorescence, within the animal body, depend on chemical actions; and that
these take place in the system just as they would in a chemist's laboratory;
ever modified by and subjected to this same mysterious Proteus - the Vital
Principle, of which science can tell us nothing.

The quarrel between Galvani and Volta is well
known. One was backed by no less an authority than Alexander Humboldt, the
other by the subsequent discoveries of Matteucci, Dubois Reymond,
Brown-Sequard, and others. By their combined efforts, it was positively
established that a production of electricity was constantly going on in all the
tissues of the living animal economy; that each elementary bundle of fibrils in
a muscle was like a couple in a galvanic battery; and that the longitudinal
surface of a muscle acts like the positive pole of a pile, or galvanic battery,
while the transverse surface acts like the negative pole. The latter was
discovered by one of the greatest physiologists of our century - Dubois
Reymond: who, nevertheless, was the greatest opponent of Baron Reichenbach, the
discoverer of the Od Force, and ever showed himself the most fierce and
irreconcilable enemy of transcendental speculation, or what is best known as
the study of the occult, i.e., the yet undiscovered forces in nature.

Every newly-discovered power, each hitherto
unknown correlation of that great and unknown Force or the Primal Cause of all,
which is no less hypothetical to skeptical science than to the common credulous
mortals, was, previous to its discovery, an occult power of nature. Once
on the track of a new phenomenon science gives an exposition of the facts -
first independent of any hypothesis as to the causes of this manifestation;
then - finding their account incomplete and unsatisfactory to the public, its
votaries begin to invent generalizations, to present hypotheses based upon a
certain knowledge of principles alleged to be at work by reasserting the laws
of their mutual connection and dependence. They have not explained the
phenomenon; they have but suggested how it might be produced, and offered more
or less valid reasons to show how it could not be produced, and yet a
hypothesis from their opponents' camp, that of the Transcendentalists, the
Spiritualists and Psychologists, is generally laughed down by them before
almost these latter have opened their mouths. We will notice a few of the
newly-discovered electro-magnetic phenomena which are still awaiting an
explanation.

In the systems of certain people the
accumulation and secretion of electricity, reach under certain conditions, to a
very high degree. This phenomenon is especially observed in cold and dry
climates, like Canada, for instance; as well as in hot, but at the same time,
dry countries. Thus - on the authority of that well-known medical journal, the Lancet - one can frequently meet with people who have but to approach their index
fingers to a gas-beak from which a stream of gas is issuing, to light the gas
as if a burning match had been applied to it. The noted American physiologist,
Dr. J. H. Hammond, possesses this abnormal faculty upon which he discourses at
length in his scientific articles. The African explorer and traveller Mitchison
informs us of a still more marvellous fact. While in the western part of
Central Africa, he happened at various times in a fit of passion and
exasperation at the natives, to deal with his whip a heavy blow to a negro. To
his intense astonishment the blow brought out a shower of sparks from the body
of the victim; the traveller's amazement being intensified by his remarking
that the phenomenon provoked no comments, nor seemed to excite any surprise
among the other natives who witnessed the fact. They appeared to look upon it
as something quite usual and in the ordinary run of things. It was by a series
of experiments that he ascertained at last, that under certain atmospheric
conditions and especially during the slightest mental excitement it was
possible to extract from the ebony-black body of nearly every negro of these
regions a mass of electric sparks; in order to achieve the phenomenon it
sufficed to gently stroke his skin, or even to tough it with the hand. When the
negroes remained calm and quiet no sparks could be obtained from their bodies.

In the American Journal of Science,
Professor Loomis shows that "persons, especially children, wearing dry
slippers with thin soles, and a silk or woolen dress, in a warm room heated to
at least 70°, and covered with a thick velvet carpet, often become so
electrically excited by skipping across the room with a shuffling motion, and
rubbing the shoes across the carpet, that sparks are produced on their coming
in contact with other bodies, and on their presenting a finger to a gas-burner,
the gas may be ignited. Sulphuric ether has been thus inflamed, and in dry,
cold weather sparks, half an inch in length, have been given forth by young
ladies who had been dancing, and pulverized resin has been thus inflamed."
So much for electricity generated by human beings. But this force is ever at
work throughout all nature; and we are told by Livingstone in his Travels in
South Africa, that the hot wind which blows during the dry seasons over the
desert from north to south "is in such an electric state that a bunch of
ostrich feathers, held a few seconds against it, becomes as strongly charged as
if attached to a powerful electric machine, and clasps the advancing hand with
a sharp crackling sound....By a little friction the fur of the mantles worn by
the natives gives out a luminous appearance. It is produced even by the motion
communicated in riding; and a rubbing with the hand causes sparks and distinct crepitations
to be emitted."

From some facts elicited by M. J. Jones, of
Peckham, we find them analogous to the experiments of Dr. Reichenbach. We
observe that "a magnetoid relation subsists between subjects of a nervous
temperament and shells - the outgrowth of living entities, and which, of
course, determined the dynamical qualities of their natural coverings."
The experimenter verified the results upon four different sensitive subjects.
He says that he "was first drawn to the enquiry by the fact of a lady
looking at a collection of shells, complaining of pain while holding one of
them. His method of experimenting was simply to place a shell in the subject's
hand; the purpura chocolatum, in about four minutes, produced
contraction of the fingers, and painful rigidity of the arm, which effects were
removed by quick passes, without contact, from the shoulders off at the
fingers."

Again, he experimented with about thirty
shells, of which he tried twelve, on May 9, 1853; one of these causing acute
pain in the arm and head followed by insensibility.

He then removed the patient to a sofa, and
the shells to a side-board. "In a short time," says Mr. Dixon, from
whose book we quote the experiment, "to his astonishment the patient,
while still insensible, gradually raised her clasped hands, turning them
towards the shells on the sideboard, stretching the arms out at full length,
and pointing to them. He put down her hands; she raised them again, her head
and body gradually following. He had her removed to another room, separated
from that containing the shells by a nine-inch wall, a passage, and a lath and
plaster wall; the phenomenon, strange to say, was repeated. He then had the
shells removed into a back room, and subsequently into other places, one of
which was out of the house. At each removal the position of the hands altered
to each new position of the shells. The patient continued insensible... for
four days. On the third of these days the arm of the hand that had held the
shells was swollen, spotted, and dark-coloured. On the morning of the fourth
day, these appearances had gone, and a yellow tinge only remained on the hand.
The effluence which had acted most potently, in this experiment, proceeded from
the cinder murex and the chama macrophylla, which was most wonderful;
the others of the twelve were the purpurata cookia, cerethinum orth., pyrula
ficordis, sea urchin (Australia), voluta castanea, voluta musica,
purpura chocolatum, purpura hyppocas tanum, melanatria fluminea, and monodonta
declives."

In a volume entitled "The Natural and
the Supernatural" M. Jones reports having tested the magnetoid action of
various stones and wood with analogous results; but, as we have not seen the
work we can say nothing of the experiment. In the next number we will endeavour
to give some more facts and then proceed to compare the "hypotheses"
of both the exact and the psychological sciences as to the causes of this
inter-action between man and nature, the Microcosm and the Macrocosm.